Motivation

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Motivation
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Motivations for Self-Enhancement

• Self-enhancement is a motivation to focus on and
  elaborate more about ones strengths and positive
  characteristics than on ones weaknesses and
  negative characteristics.
• Many studies demonstrate that this is a powerful
  motivation that used to be viewed as universal.
  Cross-cultural research reveals that its a
  motivation thats more pronounced in Western
  cultures than elsewhere.

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Evidence for North American Self-Enhancement

• Most North Americans have high self-esteem (e.g.,
  about 93 of European-descent UBC students).
• Most North Americans show evidence for various
  self-serving biases, in which they view
  themselves in unrealistically positive terms.
  (e.g., about 25 of American high school students
  think theyre in the top 1 with regard to
  getting along well with others).
• Most North Americans use various self-esteem
  maintenance strategies to discount any negative
  feedback that they might encounter (e.g., they
  will usually take more credit for their successes
  than they will blame for their failures).

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• Such self-enhancing tendencies are so commonly
  found in North American samples that they have
  been proposed to be mentally healthy ways of
  viewing the world.
• However, this reasoning becomes more problematic
  when we look at cross-cultural data, and these
  self-enhancing tendencies are not as strong
  elsewhere. If theyre a core part of mental
  health, then why arent they common through much
  of the world?
• In East Asian samples, in particular, there is
  little evidence for self-enhancing motivations,
  but also little evidence for problems of mental
  health.

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• We conducted a meta-analysis on all published
  studies comparing Westerners and East Asians on
  various measures of self-enhancement.
• A total of 131 comparisons were found, employing
  31 different methodologies, and over 33,000
  participants.

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• To summarize, there are large cultural
  differences in self-enhancement motivations.
• Whereas Westerners show consistent and strong
  evidence for self-enhancement, East Asians do
  not.
• In many studies, East Asians show evidence for
  self-criticism.

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Do East Asians Enhance their Groups?

• One alternative explanation is that East Asians
  enhance their group selves rather than their
  individual selves. That is, the motivation to
  self-enhance is similar across cultures but the
  target that is enhanced is different.
• We explored this in a study by comparing how
  people evaluated their universities (Heine
  Lehman, 1997).

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• We contrasted two rival universities in Vancouver
  and in Kyoto.
• In Vancouver we assessed how UBC and SFU students
  evaluated both UBC and SFU.
• In Kyoto we assessed how Ritsumeikan and Doshisha
  students evaluated both Ritsumeikan and Doshisha.

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Evaluations of Euro-Canadians

• Both students from UBC and SFU evaluated UBC more
  positively than SFU.
• However, UBC students viewed the gap between the
  schools to be much larger than did students from
  SFU.
• This indicates an overall university-enhancing
  bias, although we cant say which school is
  showing more of a bias.

Quality of University
Evaluating University
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Evaluations of Japanese

• Both students from Doshisha and Ritsumeikan
  evaluated Doshisha more positively than
  Ritsumeikan.
• However, Doshisha students viewed the gap between
  the schools to be smaller than did students from
  Ritsumeikan.
• This indicates an overall university-critical
  bias, although we cant say which school is
  showing more of a bias.

Quality of University
Evaluating University
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• Another alternative explanation is that these
  studies might just tap into what people say, and
  not what they really feel.
• Perhaps modesty norms make it difficult for East
  Asians to express their self-enhancing feelings.
  Alternatively, perhaps Westerners learn to
  describe themselves in terms that are more
  positive than they really believe.
• That is, the cultures might have similar
  self-enhancing motivations, but self-presentation
  norms conceal this.

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• We conducted a study to investigate whether
  cultural differences in self-enhancement
  generalized to their private thoughts.
• Canadian and Japanese first completed 20 IQ test
  items on a computer.
• They were told that the second part of the study
  investigated their ability to make decisions with
  limited information.
• The decision they were to make is whether their
  performance across all 20 IQ items is better or
  worse than that of the average student from their
  school.

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• Half were assigned to receive scores better than
  the average student, and half were assigned to
  receive worse scores.
• Participants viewed their performance alongside
  that of the average student for each of the
  individual IQ items, one item at a time.
• They were asked to make a decision about their
  overall performance (across all 20 items) as soon
  as a pattern was evident to them.

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Number of Items Needed to Make a Decision

• Canadians needed to view more trials before being
  able to conclude that they had done worse than
  average than when they concluded they had done
  better.
• Japanese showed the opposite pattern. They were
  more easily convinced that they had done poorly
  than that they had done well.
• It is difficult to explain these results as a
  function of self-presentation as there was no one
  to present to.

Number of Items Viewed
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Why are East Asians Self-Critical?

• Attending to your weaknesses is important if you
  are trying to maintain face.
• Face is the amount of social value others give
  you if you live up to the standards associated
  with your position.
• Face is more easily lost than it is gained. It
  is lost whenever one fails to live up to others
  expectations for your role, and it is gained only
  when you are promoted to a higher role.
• To maintain it is crucial to be attentive to the
  ways that you might fail to live up to the
  standards associated with your roles, and to work
  on improving those potential shortcomings.
  Self-criticism allows for self-improvement by
  directing attention to those areas where there is
  the most room for improvement.

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• Cultures vary in the extent to which theyre
  attentive to approaching good things, like those
  things that boost their self-esteem (promotion)
  or to avoiding bad things, such as things that
  threaten face (prevention).
• This cultural difference extends broadly beyond
  the kinds of information that is relevant to
  their self-views.
• One study compared how helpful people viewed book
  reviews that were posted on Amazon.com and
  Amazon.co.jp (see Hamamura et al., in press).
• The reviews of the top 10 fiction and non-fiction
  books in the US and Japan were compared. The 8
  most helpful reviews for each book were selected.
  The researchers coded each review in terms of
  the amount of positive and negative information
  that it contained.

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Contents of Helpful Book Reviews

• The helpful reviews for American books contained
  about the same amount of positive and negative
  information.
• The helpful reviews of Japanese books contained
  more negative than positive content.
• Unhelpful reviews, in contrast, didnt show this
  pattern.
• Japanese find critical feedback more helpful than
  do Americans.

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Religion and Achievement Motivation

• Over a century ago, Max Weber, a German
  sociologist, argued that motivations for
  achievement are importantly tied to cultural
  ideas that came with the Protestant Reformation.
• Some ideas that were associated with early
  Protestant sects included
• people have an individualized relation with God.
• each person has a calling, a unique God-given
  purpose to fulfill on earth. Working on your
  calling was a way to serve God.
• a belief in predestination. Before one was born
  it was already determined whether one was going
  to heaven or hell.

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• According to Weber, these ideas afforded the
  development of a culture where it became a moral
  duty to work to achieve.
• People needed to find their calling and devote
  their lives towards working at it and serving
  God.
• Because no one knew whether they were among the
  elect, they needed to look for clues. One was
  that God would only reward one on earth if they
  were among the elect.
• Further, it was perceived as sinful to enjoy the
  fruits of ones labor, so rather one should
  reinvest that to further serve God by pursuing
  their calling. This accumulation and
  reinvestment of capital laid the groundwork for
  capitalism to catch on.

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Evidence in Support of Weber

• McClelland (1961) demonstrated that German
  Protestants had stronger achievement motivations
  than German Catholics.
• Protestant parents encouraged their children to
  become self-reliant earlier than Catholic
  parents.
• The stories of Protestant boys had more evidence
  of achievement motivations than the stories of
  Catholic boys.
• Until recently, Protestant nations in Europe were
  more industrialized than Catholic ones. The
  recent shift is only after Europe has become more
  secularized.

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Evidence Inconsistent with Weber

• Self-report surveys show that the countries with
  the highest Protestant Work Ethic, are countries
  which are not Protestant (e.g., Mexico, Sri
  Lanka, Uganda).

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• Experiment by Sanchez-Burks (2002). Had
  Protestant and non-Protestant students take part
  in a task.
• For half the participants, the task was in a
  serious work situation. For the other half, the
  task was presented as a fun task.
• Throughout the interaction with a confederate,
  the confederate shook his foot.
• The dependent variable was whether the
  participant would also shake their feet to mimic
  the confederate.
• Unconscious mimicry is a marker of ones
  motivations to get close with a person.
• People may be less likely to attend to
  relationships when they are working, especially
  if theyre Protestant for whom work is a serious
  duty.

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Male Foot-Tapping by Condition

• Women did not differ across conditions or
  religions. Apparently theyre more
  relationally-engaged.
• Male Protestants were more relationally-engaged
  in casual than work settings.
• Male non-Protestants were equally
  relationally-engaged in both casual and work
  settings.

Number of Foot-taps
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Control

• People from different cultures vary in terms of
  how they get control over their lives.
• How you seek control depends on the theories that
  you have about both yourself and the social
  world.
• Two key ways to seek control are evident in how
  people might build a stone wall.

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Building a Stone Wall
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Primary and Secondary Control

• People with independent views of self tend to
  have entity theories of self, but incremental
  theories of the world. People strive to change
  circumstances to fit their desires. This is
  known as Primary Control.
• People with interdependent views of self tend to
  have more incremental theories of self, but
  entity theories of the world. People strive to
  adjust themselves to accept circumstances as they
  are. This is known as Secondary Control.

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• Example study - Morling (2000) studied aerobics
  classes in the US and Japan.
• People completed a questionnaire about why they
  chose the class, and what they do when the
  instructor initiates a difficult move.

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Why did you choose this class?

• Americans were more willing to choose classes on
  times that were convenient for them than were
  Japanese.
• Japanese were more willing to choose classes
  based on the level that the class was.
• That is, Americans attended more to finding
  classes that were convenient for them, whereas
  Japanese attended more to ensuring that they were
  a good fit for the class.

Agreement
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What do you do when a move is too difficult?

• Japanese are more likely to try harder when the
  move is difficult than are Americans.
• Americans are more likely to do their own thing
  when the move is difficult than are Japanese.
• That is, Japanese adjust themselves to the
  requirements of the class, whereas Americans
  continue to do what they would rather do.

Agreement
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• Secondary control strategies are more common in
  non-Western contexts than in Western ones.
• Primary control strategies are more common in the
  West than elsewhere.
• Is secondary control really a kind of control?

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Individual vs. Group Agency

• In collectivistic societies, groups are the
  primary focus, rather than individuals, and
  groups should be seen as more powerful.
• When a negative event happens, who is to blame?
  The individual or the group?
• Study investigated this by looking at how
  newspapers reported on rogue stock-trader
  scandals (Menon et al., 1999).
• The question is whether the newspapers focused on
  the individual strock-traders as being
  responsible, or the firms that they worked for.

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Whos to Blame?
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Newspaper References to Individuals and Firms

• American newspapers referred more to the
  individual stock trader than to their company.
• Japanese newspapers in contrast made more
  references to the company than to the individual.
• It appears that groups are viewed as more of a
  source of agency in Japan, whereas Americans
  consider agency as concentrated more in
  individuals.

Percent of References
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Making Choices

• A way that primary control is perhaps most
  directly evident is when people make choices.
• Making choices, the freedom to choose, is
  emphasized more in North American contexts than
  it is elsewhere.
• Some key decisions in life, such as who one will
  marry, what career one will have, where one will
  live, are not made by individuals in many
  cultural contexts.
• North Americans are more used to making choices
  than are people in some other cultures.

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• Some examples
• Indians take longer to make choices (but not for
  other kinds of judgments) than do Americans
  (Savani, Markus, Conner, 2008).
• Indians stated preferences do not match up with
  their choices as well as they do for Americans
  (also Savani et al., 2008).
• Americans prefer having more ice cream flavors to
  choose from than do Europeans (Rozin et al.,
  2006).

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• Its worth noting that there are costs involved
  in making choices, even for North Americans.
• For example, Americans who are given the
  opportunity to have free samples from 24 kinds of
  jam or 6 kinds of jam, end up buying more jam
  when they only have 6 kinds to choose from
  (Iyengar Lepper, 2000).
• Making choices depletes self-regulatory
  resources, and Americans subsequently persist
  less, and make more errors on a test, if they
  have made a series of choices than if they have
  just considered the options (Vohs et al., 2008).

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• It also matters who makes the choices that we
  accept.
• In some domains, people with interdependent
  selves prefer choices that are made by trusted
  others, whereas those with independent selves
  prefer choices that they make themselves.

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• Example study by Iyengar and Lepper (1999).
• They had fifth grade students from the US, who
  were divided into two groups of Asian-American
  and Euro-American backgrounds, play a computer
  game.
• There were a number of choices that could be made
  about the game, such as what color and name their
  spaceship could be.

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• The students were assigned to one of three
  conditions.
• Those in a Personal Choice condition were able
  to make choices about their space-ship.
• Those in an Ingroup Choice condition were not
  able to make their own choices, but choices were
  made for them by other students in their class.
• Those in an Outgroup Choice condition were also
  not able to make their own choices, but choices
  were made for them by an outgroup - namely 3rd
  grade students from another school.
• The dependent measure was how many games they
  attempted to play.

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• Results indicated that Euro-American kids were
  more motivated if they got to make some choices
  than if any one else made those choices for them.
• Asian-American kids, in contrast, were most
  motivated when either an ingroup made their
  choices, or they made their own choices. They
  were least motivated when an outgroup made
  choices for them.
• Asian-Americans appear to be quite content when
  choices are made for them by others, as long as
  those others are close and trusted others.

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• Perceptions of choice arent just more pronounced
  for Westerners in general. Upper middle class
  Westerners are particularly motivated by making
  choices.
• Much of middle class Western lifestyle,
  especially American, involves a wider array of
  choices.
• Study by Snibbe and Markus (2005) contrasted
  upper middle class Americans with working class
  Americans with regards to their evaluations of a
  pen they received as compensation in a study.
• In one condition participants were able to keep a
  pen that they chose. In another condition the
  experimenter replaced (usurped) their chosen pen
  with another pen.

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• Upper middle class Americans take choice
  seriously - they like a pen considerably less if
  their choice was usurped.
• Working class Americans liked the pen the same
  degree regardless of whether they chose it or if
  somebody else chose it for them.
• The working class American pattern has also been
  found in non-Western samples, suggesting that the
  unusual pattern is that of upper middle class
  Americans.

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Motivations to Fit In or to Stick Out

• A key goal in interdependent cultural contexts is
  to achieve a sense of belongingness with others.
  This can be facilitated by trying to fit in with
  others, rather than to stick out.
• In contrast, in independent cultural contexts,
  people are motivated to highlight their
  distinctiveness from others. Being independent
  from others is fostered by viewing ones
  attributes as unique, and not shared by others.

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Aschs Conformity Studies

• Had participants provide answers to an
  unambiguous task after several confederates gave
  incorrect answers.

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Original Stimulus
A B C
After hearing other people provide the wrong
answer, most American participants (approximately
3/4) will also give the wrong answer at least
once on subsequent trials.
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• This study has now been replicated in 17
  countries.
• Everywhere there is considerable conformity.
• The more collectivistic the country, on average,
  the more conformity there is. Collectivists are
  especially conforming with other ingroup members.

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• Study by Kim and Markus (1999) investigated how
  East Asians and Euro-Americans would respond to
  alternatives that were either in the majority or
  the minority.
• In one case participants had to rate which shape
  they viewed as more attractive.

• East Asian participants tended to rate the common
  shape as more desirable, whereas the
  Euro-Americans rated the uncommon shape as more
  desirable.

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• Cultural messages are commonly expressed in
  advertisements.
• Analyses of magazine ads have been compared
  across the US and East Asia regarding the use of
  themes of uniqueness and conformity.

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Advertising Themes in Korea and the United States

• American ads more frequently contained themes of
  uniqueness than fitting in.
• Korean ads more frequently contained themes of
  fitting in.
• The cultural messages that people encounter in
  their daily lives through advertisements
  differentially emphasize the value of fitting in
  or sticking out.

Percent of Ads Containing Themes
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Even when uniqueness themes are presented in
different cultures, their meaning is sometimes
different.
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• Motivations for fitting in are especially strong
  in interdependent contexts. There are real costs
  when people fail to fit in.
• Motivations for uniqueness reinforce how one
  person is different from and not dependent on
  others. These motivations are especially
  pronounced in independent contexts.